The most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.

A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.

But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

Nobody notices postmen, yet they have passions like other men.

[There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.